ard runway to where the mud-box stands. After filling up, I went back slowly, dangerously, swayingly, over bits of dolomite and coal, navigated the corner of the gallery by a hair's tolerance, and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow by Nick with relief. It's bad on my back, that's it. I'd rather do two back-walls, and tap three times in high heat, than wheel these exacting loads of mud. Nick knelt on the other side of the spout, and I gave him the mud with my shovel, to repair the holes and broken places of the spout, which the last flow of molten steel had carried away. When he finished the big holes, I gave him small gobs of mud, dipping my hands in a bucket of water between each two, to keep the stuff from sticking. A wave of weakening heat rose constantly from the spout still hot from the last flow. I prayed God Nick would hurry. He made a smooth neat surface on the whole seven-feet of spout, rounding the edges with his hands. When I came back from the spout, Fred was in front of the furnace, blue glasses on his nose, inspecting the brew. He put his glasses back on his cap, glanced at me, and pointed to a pile of dolomite and slag which had been growing in front of Number 3 door. "All right," I said, and picked up a shovel from the dolomite pile. For a couple of minutes, I shoveled the stuff down the slag hole, and remembered vividly the bygone pit-days. Then I would have been cleaning up around the buggy. For a minute I felt vastly superior to pit people. I earned two cents more an hour, and threw down a hole the dolomite and dirt they cleared away. I began to feel a little tired in back and legs, and repeated Fred's formula on how to get away with a long turn: "Take it like any other day to five o'clock. Then work for midnight. Anyone can stand it from midnight to morning." I did a front-wall on that basis. "Watch those buggies!" I ran over to the furnace and glanced down the slag hole, yelling back, "Half full." Then Fred went to an electric switch, and the whole furnace tilted till the hot running slag flowed over at the doors, and dripped into the buggy-car beneath, in the pit. I held my hand up as one of them filled, and Fred caught the pitching furnace with the switch, and stopped the flow of slag. 4 P.M. _Sunday_ Number 8 furnace tapped, and I shoveled manganese into the ladle with that man from Akron, who is new, and who, I noticed, burned his fingers in the same way I did on my first day. Then back-wall and front-wall, and Jock saying all the while, "It's a third gone, lads." 5 P.M. _Sunday_ I felt much more tired after this first ten hours than later; it was the limp fatigue that comes from too much heat. I ate fried eggs and a glass of milk, and then my appetite took a start and I ordered cold lamb and vegetables. When I finished, I went back into the mill to my locker, and took out a cigarette. I sat on a pile of pipes against a main girder, intending to smoke; the cigarette went out, and I slept a half hour. Things were going first-rate from six to nine. Jigger, clean up scrap, front-wall Number 6, front-wall Number 8. I couldn't distinguish between this and any other night shift; the food must have acted for sleep. But after nine the hours dragged. From 9.20 to 10.00 was a couple of hours. In the middle of a front-wall, I saw the efficiency man, Mr. Lever, come through and stare at the furnace, walk around a little, and stare profoundly at the furnace. Mr. Lever was pointed in two places, I noticed for the first time. He had a pointed stomach, and his face worked into a point at his nose. I noticed carefully that he had a receding chin and a receding forehead. As he watched us scoop the dolomite, drag up to the spoon, dump, scoop up the dolomite, and do it over, for three quarters of an hour, I thought about him. I wanted to go up to him, and give him my shovel. I had to struggle against that impulse--to go up to him and give him my shovel. The evening dragged. I fought myself, to keep from looking at the clock. I fought for several hours after ten o'clock, and then, when I thought dawn must be breaking, went up and found it ten minutes of eleven. I did feel relieved at twelve, and went out to the restaurant, saying: "Hell, anyone can wait till morning." Sometimes, when things are hurried, when tapping is near or a spout is to be fixed, you have to eat still drenched in sweat. But to-night I had time, and at quarter of twelve hung my shirt on the hot bricks at the side of the furnace, and stood near the doors in the heat, to dry my back and legs. I then washed soot and dolomite dust from ears and neck, and dipped my left arm, which was burned, in cold water. At twelve I put on the dried shirt, and went to eat. Half the men wash, half don't. There were a number of open-hearth helpers in the restaurant, with black hands and faces, two eating soup, two with their arms on the counter. Their faces lacked any expression beyond a sullen fatigue; but their eyes roved, following Beck about. Lefflin had his arms on the counter and his face on them. I ate ham and eggs, which included coffee, fried potatoes, two slices of bread, and a glass of milk. Walking back to the furnaces was an effort of will. I climbed the embankment to the tracks very slowly, the stones and gravel loosening and tumbling downhill at each step. I tried hard to concentrate on a calculation of the probable number of front-walls to come. Then I wondered if it wouldn't pay to cut out breakfast in the morning, and get nine hours of sleep instead of eight and a quarter. Friselli came up the bank behind me. He is third on Number 6. "Well," I said, "make lots of money to-night." "What's the good money, kill yourself?" he said, and went past me along the tracks. Number 8 was preparing to make front-wall. I felt weary, and full of ham and eggs, and very desirous of sitting down right there on the floor. But Jock, the first-helper on Eight, said, "Oh, Walker!" when he saw me, and we began. Through that front-wall Jock was tiring. He worked in little spurts. For "half a door" he would sing, and goad us on in half-Scotch, and for the next half he would be silent, and wipe his face with his sleeve. After that door, he came up to us and said with profound conviction, "It's a lang turn, it's a lang turn." When we finished, Jock lay down on a bench. It's a part of a third-helper's duties to keep five or six bags of fine anthracite coal on the little gallery back of the furnace, near the spout. I went after that little job now. Fifty pounds of coal in a thick paper bag isn't much to carry, till you get doing it a couple of days running. I sat on the seat where the Wop stays who works the furnace-doors; they call him the "pull up." That had some sacks and a cushion, and was broad, with a girder for back. I fell asleep. Something twisting and pinching my foot woke me up. It was the first-helper. "Fifteen thousand, quick!" he said. I got up with a jerk, feeling not so sleepy as I expected, but immeasurably stiff. I moved in a wobbly fashion down toward the Bessemer. I felt as if I were limping in four or five directions. Very vigorously and insistently I thought of one thing. I would look at the clock opposite Number 6 when I went by, and possibly, very probably, a whole pile of hours had been knocked off. Then I thought with a sting that we had not tapped, and it couldn't be more than three o'clock. It was two! "Fifteen thousand," I said to myself, "quick"; and climbed the iron stairs to the Bessemer platform. When I came back, I walked beside the locomotive as it dragged the ladle and the fifteen thousand pounds of molten pig iron. Through closing eyes I watched the charging-machine thrust in the spout. That long finger lifted the clay thing from its resting-place on the big saw-horses between furnaces. Then, moving on the rails, the machine adjusted itself in front of number two door, and shoved the spout in with a jar. I stood lazily watching the pouring of the molten steel. Fred motioned slowly with his hands, with "Up a little, whoop!" as the stream flowed very cleanly into the spout and furnace. Then came the noise of lifting, that characteristic crane grind, with a rising inflection as it gained speed and moved off. "Pretty soon tapping, after tapping back-wall, front-wall, the spout, morning," I meditated. "Well, how in hell are you?" It was Al, the pit boss. "Fine!" I said as loudly as I could; and went and sat down at once. My chin hit my chest. I stopped thinking, but didn't go to sleep. "Test!" yelled Fred. We tested three times, and then tapped. There were two ladles, with four piles of manganese, to shovel in. A third-helper from Number 4, a short stocky Italian, shoveled with me. The ladle swung slightly closer to the gallery than usual, and sent up a bit more gas and sparks. We put out little fires on our clothes six or seven times. After the first ladle, the Italian put back the sheet iron over the red-hot spout, and after the second ladle, I put it on. We rested between ladles, in a little breeze that came through between furnaces. "What you think of this job?" he asked. "Pretty bad," I said, "but pretty good money." He looked up, and the veins swelled on his forehead. His cheeks were inflamed, and his eyes showed the effects of the twenty hours of continuous labor. "To hell with the money!" he said, with quiet passion; "no can live." The words sank into my memory for all time. The back-wall was, I think, no hotter than usual, but men's nerves made them mind things they would have smirked at the previous morning. The third-helper on Eight and Nick quarreled over a shovel, and Nick sulked till Fred went over and spoke to him. Once the third-helper got in Nick's way. "Get out, or I'll break your goddam neck!" And so on-- I felt outrageously sore at everyone present--not least, myself. After that back-wall all except Fred threw their shovels with violence on the floor, and went to the edge of the mill. They stood about in the little breeze that had come up there, in a state of fatigue and jangled nerves, looking out on a pale streak of morning just visible over freight cars and piles of scrap. We made front-wall, and when it was over, I went to the bench by the locker and sat down, to try to forget about the spout. I had been forgetting about it for twenty minutes when Nick came up, and shook me, thinking I had fallen asleep. "Mud," he said. I got him mud. Nick fixed up the spout amid an inclination to cursing in Serbian, and gave me commands in loud tones in the same language. I felt exceedingly indifferent to Nick and to the spout, and finished up in a state of enormous indifference to all things save the chance of sleep. Jack, the second-helper of Eight, was making tea, having dipped out some hot steel with a test-spoon, and set a tea-pot on it. "Want some?" he said. I nodded. Watching him make it, and drinking the tea woke me up. "What time is it?" I asked. "Four-thirty," said he. "Thanks for the tea." Then the summoning signal for a third-helper rang out--a sledge-hammer pounding on sheet iron. They were "spooning up," that is, making front-wall, on Number 6. All through that stunt I was wide awake, quite refreshed, though with the sense, the conviction, that I had been in the mill, doing this sort of thing, for a week at the inside. Coming back to Seven from that, I found Fred flat on his back, looking "all in." Jock came up for a drink of water, and looked over at me. "You look to me," he remarked, "like the breaking up of a bad winter." He laughed. 5 A.M. _Monday_ The sun came into the mill, looking very pallid and sick beside the bright light from the metal. I watched the men on Eight make back-wall, and heard the sounds; I sat on the bench, my legs as loose as I could make them, my head forward, eyes just raised. "Lower, lower, goddam you, lower!" came a desperate command to the "pull-up" man to close the furnace doors. "Get out--" "One more--" "Up, up, goddam it! where are your ears?" "Come on, men, last door." "My shovel you son-of-a--!" Now they were tapping on Number 6. The melter came out of his shanty; he had had a sleep since the last furnace tapped. He rubbed his eyes, and went out on the gallery. I could hear his "Heow." Four poor devils were standing in the flame, putting in manganese. Thank God, I don't shovel for Six. "A jigger," from Fred. "Sure." When I went for it, the sores on the bottom of my feet hurt, so that I walked on the edges of my shoes. I was so delighted with the idea of its being six o'clock, with no back-walls ahead, that I almost took pleasure in that foot. I stopped in front of a fountain and put my right arm under the water. The recorder in the Bessemer was asleep. He was a boy of twenty. I woke him up, and grinned in his face. "Fifteen thou' for Number 7." "You go to hell, with your goddam Number 7!" I grinned at him again, knew it was just the long turn, knew he'd give me that fifteen thousand pounds; went down stairs again-- Twenty minutes of seven. It's light. Nobody talks, but everyone dresses in a hurry. Everyone's face looks grave from fatigue--eyes dead. We leave at ten minutes of seven. 7 A.M. _Monday_ It's a problem--a damn problem--whether to walk fast and get home quick, or walk slow and sort of rest. I try to go fast, and have the sense of lifting my legs, not with the muscles, but with something else. I shake my head to get it clearer. One bowl of oatmeal. Coffee. "I feel all right." I get up and am conscious of walking home quietly and evenly, without any further worry about the difficulty of lifting my feet. "The long turns, they're not so bad," I say out loud, and stumble the same second on the stairs. I get up, angry, and with my feet stinging with pain. Old thought comes back: "Only seven to eight hours sleep. Bed. Quick." I push into my room--the sun is all over my bed. Pull the curtain; shut out a little. Take off my shoes. It's hard work trying to be careful about it, and it's darn painful when I'm not careful. Sit on the bed, lift up my feet. Feel burning all over; wonder if I'll ever sleep. Sleep. VI BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP At the end of every shift, when I walked toward the green mill-gate just past the edge of the power house, I could look over toward the blast-furnaces. There were five of them, standing up like mammoth cigars some hundred feet in height. A maze